God created diversity. It is satan that created racism. How do I know? The first time racism occurred in Scripture (“Miriam and Aaron spoke against Mo
God created diversity. It is satan that created racism. How do I know? The first time racism occurred in Scripture (“Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Ethiopian woman whom he had married”-Numbers 12:1), God punished the racists.
Many people have asked why I am yet to comment on the George Floyd case, and the truth is that I am not as concerned about Blue on Black killings as I am about Black on Black killings. For every Black man killed by a White cop, there are over 20 Black people murdered by their fellow Blacks. The death of George Floyd is a tragedy. Officer Chauvin AND HIS CREWS must be charged as a lesson. But the Black race must learn our own lesson. Protests are good. But destroying infrastructure in Black neighborhoods doesn’t help George get justice!
Many Africans who have never travelled out of Africa are sadly unaware of the tragedy of Black disunity. They are shocked when they first get to London or New York and expect the Blacks they meet there to embrace them, only to be scorned! When I first became a resident in America at age 9, the only people who ever called me ‘African butty scratcher’ or who told me to go back to Africa were my fellow Blacks. I lived in Albany, California, which was very White in the 80s. Not once did I experience that from Whites!
We Black people have to start loving ourselves. Then and only then will we be valued. To a large extent, we don’t love or even like ourselves. If a Black African goes to Europe or America, too often, it is Whites in those countries who are friendlier to him than his or her fellow Blacks.
I remember when I first went to school in England, I was stuck in the underground. Naturally, I was drawn to asking other Blacks like me. Not one of my fellow Blacks even listened to me. The first White man I asked entered the tube with me and took me to my school.
Look at the knife crimes in London. Who is killing who? Look at the murders in Chicago. Who is killing who? Even look at the abortion rate per race. Who is killing their unborn children? These are uncomfortable conversations Blacks should have. Right there in America, many East Coast Blacks don’t like West Coast Blacks. And many Blacks on both American coasts don’t like African Blacks. Caribbean Blacks don’t like African Blacks. How then can we expect others to like us if we don’t like ourselves?
We cannot behave as if #BlackLivesMatter only when a White person does the killing. If Black lives matter, it should matter above board. It should matter when Blacks kill Blacks and when Blacks hate Blacks and when Blacks discriminate Blacks. We Blacks are very reactionary to racism, and we should reject it. But do we love ourselves? In South Africa, did we love ourselves? How many Black people died at the hands of fellow Blacks in SA? We must reject racism amongst ourselves first.
In Africa, many of our well-known comedians have made tasteless jokes about dark-skinned Blacks like Lupita Nyongo. In America, Blacks sororities and fraternities reject fellow Blacks if they can’t pass The Brown Paper Bag Test. Simone Biles became the most decorated American gymnast. While the world was celebrating her, we Blacks were denigrating her (Google it) for refusing to ‘fix’ her hair (chemically straighten it to make it less nappy). We have our issues.
In Nigeria, we have a President who favours his own Fulani tribe above other Nigerians. A man who killed 347 Shiite men, women, children and infants. What the White police did to George Floyd is not up to what General Buhari is doing to Nigerians. If a White President says ‘constituents that gave me 97% cannot be treated same with constituencies that gave me 5%’ and then goes on to exclude Blacks, there would be an uproar. But it is happening in Nigeria. And we accept it!
Recently, some young persons have been killed by the police in Nigeria. Ditto for Kenya and South Africa. Where was this George Floyd level rage? Or is it okay for Blacks police officers to kill Blacks and not okay for White police? Isn’t that racist? In Nigeria, a Governor’s son (Nasir El-Rufai), labelled a whole ethnic group and called an Igbo mother a bed jumper that he would pass around to his friends. Tueh went the sound. Many of those raging over George Floyd defended him.
A significant challenge with the Black Race is that every Black person wants to be Black when a White person kills or is racist to another Black person. But few of us are Black enough to be Black when a Black person kills or is racist/tribalistic to another Black.
Right now, there is an episodic massacre ongoing in Southern Kaduna. Black herdsmen are killing Black pastoralists. If I put up the pictures on social media, Twitter and Facebook may ban my account. We should care about George Floyd. We should also care about Southern Kaduna. In Southern Kaduna, you see the frontlines of Nigeria’s ethnic and religious divide. A young man, Bello Shagari, put up a tweet saying (inaccurately) that the Southern Kaduna Massacre is a hoax because someone told him. I responded by listing 3 Northern Muslim journalists who confirmed that the massacre is real. It has not escaped my notice that Bello is of the same ethnicity of those suspected of being the perpetrator of the killings.
And we want to settle the George Floyd matter when we have not settled our genocidal hatred of each other. I have lost track of how many times Nigerians and Kenyans, or Ghanaians and Ivorians or Northern Cameroonians and Southern Cameroonian have trended on social media because of their international beefs. We do not like ourselves, and we expect others to like us, and when they don’t, we shout racism. Have we forgotten Whitney Houston’s song, The Greatest Love of All (originally by George Benson)?
Because the greatest
Love of all is happening to me
I found the greatest
Love of all inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all
Let us be truthful to ourselves. The Black Race has not yet found this Greatest Love of All. The Jews have found it. The Arabs exude it. Caucasians have it. The Asiatic races have it. Latin America has it to an extent. However, we, the Black people, do not yet have this love. And until we do, we will never truly fulfil our potential. We will keep on investing in arms to kill ourselves when we should be developing farms to feed ourselves. The worst is that we do not even take responsibility. It is the White man’s fault. It is the Arab. It is our climate. It is… No. It is our fault. And it is our duty to find a solution! And until we find a solution, there will be many more George Floyds in America and many more Southern Kaduna Massacres.
If it were not so sad, I would have found it amusing that those Nigerians who are rightly calling for the trial of the cop responsible for killing George Floyd are not angry that Buratai, who masterminded the killings of 347 Shiite men, women, children and infants, was not punished for his crimes. Rather, he was promoted by General Buhari to Lieutenant General.
I urge Nigerians and other Africans to do locally what they expect others to do globally. Only then will we have the moral authority to condemn incidences like George Floyd’s killing.
Reno Omokri is an author and a former Special Assistant to Goodluck Jonathan
